Friday, April 1, 2011

Friday, April Fool's Day, 2011

It seemed we were all very content to lounge around and have a slow morning.

And much cuddles and pillow fights.

While father and son stared at each other in a very serious looking staring contest, I slipped away into the kitchen.

I made a lot of noise. Pomp and ceremony, you understand. I was only preparing for an amazing breakfast.

I called to everyone:

PANCAKES!

And they ran like a herd of elephants into my kitchen.

But they were paper pancakes!

Moo-hahahahahaha... April Fool's!

They were not impressed when I served them oatmeal...but life's like that. You don't always get what you expect. ;)

After breakfast, I told everyone to go do something quietly. And while they did, I hid 19 scripture verses on Foolishness and 19 verses on Wisdom around the rooms they typically clean each day. The catch was that they had to do a very thorough cleaning job in order to find all of the verses.

After I have hidden the verses, I catch my crew reading in a walkway. I announce that it will soon be chore time.

And then, they vanish. No sight of them.

Only silent greets me.

I search and find....THIS

More reading!

How to punish this type of behaviour?!?!?!

The kids quickly do their chores and find all 19 Foolish verses and 19 Wisdom verses (Thanks to the book "Instruction in Righteousness" for the quick access to verses)

We then list all the traits belonging to the foolish

My youngest girl writes most of it out. We only get through the Foolish verses today, but incredible discussion happens.

In case you are wondering, a fool: is despised, dies, causes pain, is lazy, gets in trouble with his words, speaks evil, mocks, makes his family sad, has a broken relationship with his/her parents,chases fantasies, makes poor decisions, doesn't value precious things, acts silly, talks too much, their laughter is mean and loud, they trust in themselves and they live selfishly.

Don't be a fool!

My eldest prepares a kettle of fish for her siblings. Gummy fish--April fools!

Train play

Dino play

Drawing pictures of the Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly

An interesting discussion on whether or not the Old woman could, in fact, chase a horse in order to swallow it

Magnet fishing with the gummy fish. Yes, that is a paper clip for the mouth. My kids came up with this. This is what happens at my house, when I go to throw in a load of laundry

The fish is captured!

Our neighbours next door lost their grandmother this week. It's been a sad week for our little friends.

We pray for them and think of ways to cheer them up.

We discuss death, funerals and how people need support in sad times.

So we paint rainbows....because rainbows make you smile

Easy to do with our watercolour sponge paints

A myriad of rainbow pictures. We cut these paintings out into the shapes of flowers, and...

...made a bouquet to give to our friends. We made cards and pictures and sent it over in loads of love.

Bike riding

Playing with neighbours

Our neighbours leave for the funeral and we go over to clean up their house. They called and asked if we could. It was exciting to serve their family this way.

They had left over punch which they said we could drink...so we did!

And in the midst of my cleaning up...where is my crew. Silent and gone. I find them here...playing farm. I just love the pictures of my crew together! Look at the pout on my little man

That is moi. I am wearing a custom jewelry piece made by my daughter.

This is a wall hanging in my neighbour's house. Isn't it gorgeous? I love this. I need to go shopping with her. She has an amazing eye for all things beautiful.

Then we left our neighbour's a very special message

And we drank some punch

We came home and read the book THE APRIL FOOL which was quite funny.

Then we noticed a gray sky, so we checked the website for weather and cried.

Sprin eludes us yet again. (and there was much weeping an gnashing of teeth over this!)

But not to fear the librarian called us, as she does every Friday to inform us that our books had come in. And since we don't want to walk to the library in snow tomorrow, we walk today!

Youngest daughter insists on bringing the little doghouse we decorated today. Can you see the chimney?

And eldest daughter shows us her mad biking skills

And the skies threaten to pummel us with snow, but we carry on, refusing to change course due to a few angry clouds.

We chat with the librarians. A lady comes in and says that it is start to "spit" outside. Who's spit exactly? The clouds. I signal my gang to hightail it outta there and we do.